Explorer Captain Dib First Class
by HideousBlob
Summary: I probably should let him go be an idiot and die. But if I let my co-pilot die I'll get fired. "You're lucky I want to keep my job, Zim." Reupload. AU, ZADF (Image by EternallyOptimistic! :D ) (Finished story, will not be continued.)


a/n: this fic is really old! i have nothing to say about it. it's probably not the best thing ever. i hope you enjoy it anyway!

**IMPORTANT:** the image for this story was done for me by eternallyoptimistic on deviantART/bbrode on tumblr, and i recommend you look her up! she's awesome! :)

Original A/N: Hi. Just a fluffy little AU oneshot: 'What if the rivals weren't rivals?', with a dash of 'sci-fi adventure in spaceships and space with some space and space.' I hope you enjoy it.

_In Elseworlds, heroes are taken from their usual settings and put into strange times and places — some that have existed, and others that can't, couldn't or shouldn't exist. The result is stories that make characters who are as familiar as yesterday seem as fresh as tomorrow._ - DC Comics

* * *

We're going down again.

Yep, no doubt about it. All the lights on the control panel are flashing and the AI voice says: "Engine #2 is nonfunctional. You guys are f-" Static.

And now, the surface of the planet is rushing up at us. Again.

"Come on, Zim!" I punch him on the arm. He grunts. He's kneeling on the edge of his seat, hunched over the control panel, hands flurrying over the controls so fast I can't tell what he's doing, which is always just a great sign. "This is the third time this month! You still don't know how to fly your own ship?"

"SILENCE!" He starts moving even faster. I push him back from the panel so he can't make things worse. He squirms and claws at my arm. "LET ME GO!"

"No way! This whole thing is your fault, Zim!" I punch in a couple of override codes that have no effect but to make that stupid AI yell at me some more. I curse a little and Zim scrambles over my arm to keep clawing at the controls. I let him go, even he can't make this any worse.

"We'll have to eject," I say, standing up.

"What? No! It's just a core meltdown!" He's whining, wheedling at me, like he does when he's been told he can't have any more candy today. Yep, he's whining because I won't let him mess with the controls of a crashing spaceship. This? This is what I have to work with every day. Still want my job?

I pick him up by the scruff of the neck and he squawks. That's the good thing about Zim for a co-pilot, he's small and easily handled. "Come on, you jerk."

"Let me go! As your superior I order you to let me go!" He wriggles.

"We're the same rank," I say, and cart him off towards where we keep the escape pod. (He pulls that 'rank' crap all the time too. He's just a real prize all around.) "You should be grateful that I'm saving your sorry carcass! This whole thing is your fault to begin with!"

"Lies! Lies! You're the one that wanted to stop to pick up that giiiiirl." He says the word 'girl' with great mischievous relish, like it's some kind of curse word he's not supposed to say in mixed company.

"Well, you're the one that typed in the self-destruct code instead of the landing code!"

"At least I found us a planet to crash on!"

"Yeah, in the middle of nowhere! When we get back I'm putting in a request for a new-"

He suddenly squirms out of my grip, and he's running back for the controls. Just like he'll steal candy when we tell him he's had enough (and then get twice as hyper as usual and make everyone around- not just me- want to put a bullet in his head).

"ZIM! GET BACK HERE!"

"NO!" He hits more buttons. I run over and pick him up again. He punches me in the jaw, which I hardly feel given that he's a third of my size. "RELEASE ME, YOU BIG-HEADED FOOL!"

I probably should. Let him go be an idiot and die. But if I let my co-pilot die I'll get fired. "You're lucky I want to keep my job, Zim." I don't know if he heard me. The alarms are blaring pretty loud now.

I drag him towards the pods again. A thirty-pound Irken is pretty easy to carry. One that's trying to scratch your face off, not so much.

"Coward!" he's saying.

"Moron!"

"Big head!"

"Shorty!"

He gasps, like he's actually hurt by this.

The ship spasms and I fall over on my butt with Zim on my face. I push him off, then push myself up and turn around and see through the view screen that the outside of the ship is coated in re-entry flames. It's too late to eject now. Or pull up, for that matter- if that was even possible to begin with!

I do the only sensible thing I can think of and smack Zim in the back of the head. "You idiot!"

"Fraidy monkey!"

"We're both gonna crash, Zim! Can you get that though your stupid thick head?" I shake him. He glowers. "You- GAAAH!"

The ship's shaking pretty bad now. I keep a tight hold on Zim because I know if I give him half a chance he'll go try the controls some more. I hear a scream and realize it's me.

The impact is our worst one yet. I go flying into the wall and then rolling on the floor. The world is shaking and grinding and clanging and I end up slammed into the captain's chair. There's a horrible snapping sound from my arm and my vision goes gray.

When the world stops moving I get up, throw up, and then look around for Zim.

But I can't see! Holy crap, I'm blind! The impact must have destroyed the link from my eyes to my brain! I'm totally and completely...

...not wearing my glasses. Oh. Phew.

After a minute of undignified crawling and groping (like there was anything dignified about spaceship crashes to begin with) I find my glasses on the floor, put them back on and can see again, though one side of my vision is occluded by a broken-glass spider web. I wish I couldn't see. The cockpit's never been so trashed. Me and Zim are totally fired. Even though the whole thing was his fault.

"Look at this mess!" I say, and I hear a groan coming from the left side of the room.

I can't see Zim anywhere. He could be pinned under that fallen equipment locker. I can feel my heart beating in my ears. Images of the Telura crash appear before my eyes without warning. It wasn't even a bad one, but Zim wasn't wearing a seatbelt and his air bag didn't open and he was standing up in his seat like the idiot that he is and he fell into the control panel and there was blood everywhere and where is he?!

I run for the fallen locker. There are boots sticking out from under it. No.

Now I'm thinking of after the Telura crash, seeing him in that hospital room, he never looked smaller and he kept rolling his eyes and saying everyone was making a huge deal out of nothing ('not that I can blame them, they've probably never been this close to greatness before') and I wanted to punch him and hug him at the same time and it was just sucky, all right? I pick up the locker and he's under it, stretched out on his back. There's not much in the locker. It's pretty light. Maybe he's okay.

I toss the thing aside and kneel down to look at Zim. He looks crabby even when he's passed out. I can't see any evidence of damage, I poke him and his bones don't seem to be broken or anything. But his organs could be all squished.

"Come on, buddy," I hear myself muttering. "Get up."

He snorts and twitches and suddenly sits bolt upright, looking around. "Woo, that was a good one," he says, then he stands up and puts his hands on his hips. He's fine.

And still a jerk.

"What a mess," Zim says, looking around at the wrecked ship innards.

"Yeah?" I stammer. "Well, whose fault is that, genius? Huh? Huh?"

He looks over at me, raising an eyebrow. "Your head is bleeding," he says. "And your arm is hanging funny."

He's right. There's a huge bleeding welt on the back of my head. I didn't notice that. I did notice the arm, though. It really hurts. "Again, whose fault is that?"

He sighs and looks away. "Ohhh, I'll have to fix the ship so we can take you to the hospital..."

I shake my head, then wince. "Yeah. You're a real altruist, Zim."

He nods absent-mindedly. I hate him.

We carry medical stuff, of course. We'd have to be way dumber than we are not to. There's a splint for my arm and some painkillers. What we don't have is food, so we'd better hope we can get out of here fast. I don't trust food on uncharted planets. For that matter, I don't trust the animals you find on uncharted planets. Nothing better eat us.

"I'd be fine right now if you'd let us eject!" I snap at Zim as he works on the engine. I can't do much with a broken arm, but to be honest he's a way better mechanic than I am anyway. In fact, he's a really good mechanic. It's kind of an idiot savant thing, I think. Maybe. Is that the right word? I don't care. My arm hurts.

"Nonsense!" he says from waist-deep in wires and gadgets and circuitry. "We would have both exploded in a giant fireball if we went into one of those doomy death pods!" He spits those words with great venom. Zim doesn't just talk like a normal person. He swings his arms around and does all these retarded pitch things with his voice like John Travolta in that really old movie, Battlefield Earth. He scares the crap out of people just meeting him, including people we're rescuing, and he doesn't even notice. "You should thank Zim!"

"That was one time! Besides, the new model of escape pods is completely safe! Our dad designed them!"

"Lies! Marketing lies!"

I slam my hand on the ground. "You are the worst co-pilot ever, you know that right?"

"They said the Tichanic was safe!" Zim says with a point at the sky.

"Titanic."

"They said the Hindenburger was safe!"

"Hindenburg."

"They said the Massil was safe!"

"Massive. Can't you even get your absurd analogies right?"

"All those things exploded!"

"The Titanic hit an iceberg."

"And what was that iceberg doing there?" Zim demands.

I... "It was just there! It was an iceberg!"

"AHA!" he says, as if this proves his point.

"You know, right now the pain in my butt is way worse than the one in my arm or my head," I snap.

"I'm not splinting your butt." He goes back to work. So do I. I'm writing down all the details of this planet in my notebook. The environment, the location, what lives here (biting insects, if you were curious). That's how we do things. Zim fixes the ship, bugs the locals, and takes care of most of the fighting; I do the real work.

Time passes... slowly. So, so slowly. This is one of those hot jungle planets and soon we're both sweating. Zim is panting like a dog.

My report was finished forever ago. If I wasn't injured I'd go explore, but I am injured and it's too hot anyway. Instead I scratch pictures into the dirt with a stick, half-listening to Zim moving metal parts around and mumbling to himself. Maybe I'm being a little too hard on him. He has the intellectual maturity of a three-year-old, after all, and I did ask him to bring the ship back around just so I could see Gretchen again... and I know darn well that he doesn't like to be the one at the controls. He's got four less fingers than our ships are designed for. And I know it.

But he should've let me eject!

"You should've let me eject," I say.

"Shut up."

I'm getting drowsy from the heat. I wish I had a chair to lounge in or something. Watching Zim fiddle with the engine isn't very interesting, especially when you can't help.

"How's it going?" I ask.

He grunts. He doesn't sound happy.

"You can fix it, right?"

"Of course I can fix it! I AM ZIM!"

"Of course. Silly question." I roll my eyes.

He clangs around for a little more and I ask: "How long is it gonna take you to fix it?"

"I don't know!"

"Okay, okay! Geez. You're not the one with a broken arm."

He hisses to himself.

We do have some water rations left (well, I have water, Zim has... something else that could burn my skin off) and when the twin suns get too hot we go inside the ship for a drink.

I'm getting hungry. I ask Zim if he is too, then I remember that Irken metabolism is way faster than human metabolism- he's probably been hungry for hours. And, since we have no food, reminding him of that isn't going to help him much.

He makes a 'little bit' gesture with his thumb and forefinger. He looks distracted. In his head he's probably still working on the engine, planning out the repairs he'll be doing when we're done with our drink break.

I stop drinking before I'm really satisfied- who knows when we'll be able to get more water? I put my much-lighter canteen back in the cabinet and turn around to see Zim is standing there with his head cocked, like he's listening to something I can't hear.

I'm about to ask what it is when something knocks on the hull. Honest-to-goodness knocks on it. Three loud, assertive knocks.

Before I can do or say anything Zim is off like a shot. I let him go. He's way better at quickly reacting to stuff like this than I am. Of course, he's generally too aggressive, but on an alien planet it's better to terrify a stranger into submission first and apologize later.

I'm kind of glad he's with me right now, actually.

I hear him hollering "Who are you?" and then repeating it in several different languages. One nice thing about Irkens is that they can learn a language in fifteen minutes by downloading it off the Internet. Zim knows English, Irken, German, Spanish, Jukani, Tantalog, Shylakar-Fola, Mandarin Chinese, Gibilijit, binary, Axiom code, pig latin, real Latin, and I don't know what else.

And I hear a female voice reply to him in Irken.

That doesn't happen much. Irkens are rare nowadays. I mean, really, really rare. I mean- really, really, REALLY rare. In fact, I wonder if that can really be an Irken. It's probably some other species that happened to know Irken and thought it would be diplomatic to talk to Zim in his native tongue, though I think he's probably more comfortable with English by now.

I hear them converse for a little while, too fast for me to understand, though I do speak a little Irken. Then I hear two sets of footsteps approaching and- whaddaya know, it really is another Irken! A female, taller than Zim but shorter than me, with intense purple eyes. She's wearing raggedy castaway-looking' clothes.

"Dib," Zim says- and he doesn't seem at all surprised to have encountered another of his species- "this is Tak. She lives here. She speaks Irken." Uh, yeah, like I couldn't hear them talking.

"She is Irken," I say.

Zim snorts. "She's not Irken, they're all dead."

"They're not all dead, otherwise where did you come from?"

"I came from dead people!"

Wha?...

I clear my throat. "Zim, just look at her. She has a Pak. Like you. She's green. Like you. Bug eyes and antennae. Like you."

He turns and studies Tak for a moment, then snorts. "She's not like me, she's a girl!"

I roll my eyes. "True."

Tak jabbers something, probably demanding to know what we're talking about. I can catch the word 'you'.

"Ask her if she speaks anything I can talk to her in," I ask.

Zim asks Tak a few questions. She turns to me and says in French (which has been a good language to know since Canada finally absorbed the U.S. a few years ago): "Who are you?"

I fall back on protocol. "My name is Dib," I say. "Short for Explorer Captain Dilbert Putchel, First Class. That's my brother-" Tak jerks in surprise- "Explorer Captain Zerinim, First Class. We were on our way to a refueling station when we, uh-" I rub the back of my neck. "-spiraled out of control."

Tak's eyes narrow. She looks at me, and then looks at Zim. Her expression is clear: One of these things is not like the other.

Zim tenses up, the way he always does when people give us that look (though they usually aren't as open and mean about it as Tak!). For that reason I usually don't tell people we're brothers right away..

I told Tak because historically Irkens are very xenophobic, and I wanted to make it instantly clear I had ties to a member of her species, just in case. We might really need her help, after all.

"Your brother?" she says.

"Yes," I say. "We come in pea-"

"Well, of course I'm adopted," Zim snaps.

Tak's eyes narrow further. "I see."

I swallow. Zim looks away, not bothering to hide his expression. A rock is more diplomatic than Zim. Throwing that rock at someone is more diplomatic than Zim.

"We come in peace. We'll be leaving in peace as soon as our ship is repaired," I say, rushing to fill that awful silence. "And, um, any assistance you can provide would be greatly appreciated." I toe the ground.

She's not looking very friendly, but she says: "If I give you aid, will you give me a ride to Okken 5 in your ship?" She has a faint accent that I can't quite place.

"Of course," I say.

She nods. "I take it you need supplies." Her posture is stiff and military. Irkens can live a long time; I wonder if there's any chance she's been alive since before the explosion of the Massive. Dad is really gonna want to talk to her if she has. Well, he's really gonna want to talk to her anyway.

"YES," Zim says. He looks faintly desperate.

"Very well," she says, "I'll be back in an hour with food."

And she just starts walking out. (Well, more like marching out.) As she goes Zim hollers after her: "Hey! Are you an Irken?"

"OF COURSE I'M AN IRKEN!" she yells back, sounding quite miffed.

Zim's antennae stand up and he stares. I can't help but laugh at him. "You really couldn't tell?"

"Shut up, Dib!" He rounds on me, glaring. "What did you tell her about us for?"

"It's not some kind of secret," I say, blinking. Zim's never gotten mad at me for telling before. In fact, he's usually the one who brings it up. "I thought it might get me into her good graces. Irkens are supposed to hate-" Oh, wait a minute. "Ohh... sorry."

"Oh sorry what?" he fumes.

I rub the back of my neck. Geez, I'm always yelling at Zim for being insensitive (because he is) and now I go and pull this. See, as far as I know that's the only other Irken Zim's seen and I just told her something that made her think he's a freak. "Gee, man, I really... I really..."

"What?" He folds his arms over his chest. "Have a big head? Because you really do."

That one got old years ago. I don't complain, though. "I'm sorry I told her," I say.

He bares his teeth. "You'd better be sorry! Did you see the look on her face?"

I hang my head. "I said I was sorry! Geez."

He snorts. "If you starve to death I'm eating your corpse!"

"What?"

"She's not really going to give us supplies after that! She thinks we're weird! She'll never be back!" He scowls. "You should have told her you were my slave."

I wrinkle up my nose. "What? You're mad because you don't think she's going to feed us now?"

He gives me a desperate look. "I'm hungry!"

"I thought you were mad because you thought she was hot or something!"

He stares at me, then starts cackling. "HER? Are you kidding? She's green!"

I blink. "But-"

Zim is doubled over laughing now. "Did you even see her? I mean, come on! Come on! And she's bald!"

"But I- you- I mean you look an awful lot like-"

"Silly Dib. Silly, silly Dib." He shakes his head. "I'm going to go work on the engine some more. You can stay here and be silly."

He leaves.

I just stand there. That's... not how these things are supposed to work.

I mean, I can understand no love-at-first-sight Tarzan-and-Jane kinda stuff. Zim's not the type. But I didn't expect...

Well, really, it would be kind of a shock to see another Irken for the first time. But Zim's so full of himself I thought he would instantly latch on to someone that looked like him.

I guess I was wrong.

Huh. He's usually pretty predictable.

Anyway, the existence of another Irken is pretty big news. Especially a girl. Since, you know... the other one we know about in existence isn't a girl. Irkens can't reproduce sexually anymore- it's not that- but a different 'variety' of specimen will be a huge deal.

I go to the control panel to check whether the communications are working. They're not. They must have shorted out in the crash. We don't need them to fly the ship, so Zim won't bother fixing them until we get to port.

I'd better go keep an eye on him, just in case Tak decides to come back with weapons instead of food. I go out and sit on the ground where I was sitting before. It's gotten even hotter. Dang.

I go back to my report, adding in our encounter with Tak. It takes a while because I have to go into as much detail as I can- how she looked, how healthy I thought she was, what was said. I ask Zim what they said to each other in Irken before I was brought into the conversation and he says she called him short.

I must have dozed off because now I'm waking up to the sound of screams. I sit up to see Zim threatening Tak with a gun. Her eyes are bulging out of her head.

Sadly, this isn't something that's never happened before.

They have a really terse, unintelligible exchange and I say: "HEY! PUT THAT DOWN, ZIM! GEEZ!"

He bares his teeth, not looking at me. Tak says (switching back to French): "This doesn't concern you, human!"

Zim's melodramatic mannerisms make it quite impressive-sounding when he swears. Which is what he does at Tak. In several languages.

I struggle to my feet. "Guys, back off! Come on! What's your problem?"

"You pair of fools!" Tak says. She's almost as dramatic as Zim. Almost. "If I didn't need your ship I'd let the pair of you starve!"

"How dare you?" Zim screams, shaking one fist. "How dare you insult Zim and Dib?"

"It's true!" she snaps, pointing at me. "Just look at the size of that monstrous head!"

"His head's not big!"

"My head's not big!" I agree, and then I say: "Zim, that's not worth shooting her over! She's helping us! We're gonna get so canned if you shoot her!"

His eyes narrow- and he still doesn't look at me. "No one has to know."

"This is stupid! Just leave her alone!" I turn to Tak. "I'm so sorry about that. He's not himself in the heat, you know. Uhh... we can give you money for that, when we bring you to Okken 5." Zim makes an angry noise at that.

Tak's lip curls in a sneer. She says something in Irken.

Zim lunges. He's fast. I just barely catch him, grabbing the back of his uniform before he can punch Tak's face in. He's making noises that make him sound more like an angry cat with a sore throat than a sapient being.

"I'll be back regularly to check how your repairs are going," Tak says, with a courteous nod at me- though her expression is downright chilling. And she heads away into the forest.

I hold Zim down against the ground and let him thrash himself out, like I used to do in third grade when he went through that phase where he tried to kill everyone who called him short. Finally he goes limp, panting and glaring up at me. He's sweating and he feels feverishly hot to the touch. He's never been good with heat. Not that that's any excuse for threatening to kill someone.

"What is your problem?" I say. "Shooting our only source of supplies?"

"We'll forage!"

"It takes time and energy to do that, time and energy I should spend doing reports and you should spend working on the engine!"

"I don't trust her!"

"I don't trust her either, but you're not supposed to let them know that! Did you start this job yesterday or have you been doing it for three years?! Come ON!"

He struggles. "She said you were filthy and I was tainted!" What?! Oh man, what a bi- no, no, professionalism! Diplomacy! "COME ON! Just one hit to the face! And a good kick to her-"

"No! Come on, man! That was a really crappy thing for her to say, I'll give you that. Okay? But you can't hit her. You know that, right?"

He glares up at me, then hisses, flattening his antennae to his head.

"Can I let you up or are you gonna try to find her and kill her?" I ask.

He says nothing, just looks away and pouts.

"Did she at least bring us food?"

"It's probably poisoned," he spits.

"We can analyze it and we can probably remove any poison. Now calm down!"

He huffs. "Fine, I won't kill her just yet! Now let me go!"

I get up. He scrambles to his feet, scowling and dusting off his uniform. "It's over there. It looks disgusting."

There's a pile of... stuff by the ship. Our A.I.'s analysis says Zim can eat it but I can't. He has a little bit and says it's terrible.

"Well, it's what's there," I tell him.

Irkens don't need to sleep and they can see in the dark. I sleep next to the ship while Zim keeps working on it. I don't need to wake myself up to keep watch, like the suckers with human partners.

Of course, Zim not needing to sleep wasn't something I much liked back in high school, when he'd use our dad's underground lab to throw all-night parties, but Gaz quickly put an end to that. Gaz never had much tolerance for either of us.

I wake up in a hurry. I tried to roll onto my injured arm in my sleep. There aren't adequate swear words in my vocabulary for how bad this hurts.

I sit up, growling through clenched teeth, and I see Zim sitting by the ship, hastily stowing something in his Pak. I catch a whiff of decay on the breeze and when the pain dies away enough for me to think clearly, I ask: "Was that Minimoose?"

"Minimoose? I burned that thing! What would I possibly still have Minimoose for?"

When we found Zim he had this indefinable purple thing in his Pak that seemed to have been a stuffed toy at some time. Twenty years later, it's never been washed. He keeps saying he's gotten rid of it, but then Gaz's Gaming Interface Robot will get a hold of it and stink up the house with its Dumpster smell.

I don't know why Gaz keeps that robot. It's stupid and loud, and she usually hates anything stupid and loud. I think she keeps it because we want her to get rid of it. Zim's tried to shut it off, but nothing works on that thing. I think it's possessed.

"Sure, sure," I grunt. "I need more aspirin."

Zim disappears into the ship and comes back with the pills and my canteen. I down them both. Well- the water in the canteen, not the canteen itself.

Zim makes a growling noise, tugging on his antennae. "What was iiit?!"

"What was what?" I ask.

"I had a report for you. Nrrgh! Agh!" He hammers on his head with one hand. "D'oy! Gih! AHA!" He snaps his fingers and says, quite calmly: "I finished the repairs two hours ago."

I almost do a spit take but don't because that would waste water. "You what? Why didn't you wake me up?"

"You were asleep," he says. (Durrr?)

"I want to get out of here a lot more than I want to sleep!"

He puts his long-suffering face on. "On Scintilla 6 you said the same thing. Those were your very words. And then I rouse you to go home and you torture Zim!"

"I hit you because I thought you were a bandit! Since you woke me up by hitting me with the butt of your gun and everything!"

He puffs himself up in self-righteous indignation. "I am obviously not a bandit!"

I roll my eyes. "Good for you. Well, let's wait for Tak to come by, then we can go."

He snarls.

"We promised!" I say. "Come on!"

"I hate her!"

"We'll put her in the back and never talk to her! She can give us some more supplies!"

"We're only three hours from the refueling station with my wormhole drive! We don't need stupid Tak! Leave her here and tell Keef to go get her when we get back to HQ!"

"She'd kill Keef!"

Zim grins. This grin shows a lot of teeth. A lot of sharp teeth.

I groan. "We'd get fired. No matter how influential Dad is."

"They won't know." He's rubbing his hands together. "Not unless you put it in the report. And no one will know if you don't put it in the report."

When he's gotten into this kind of mood no reasoning will work. "Well, I'm bigger and older than you so what I say goes! So there!"

He hisses. I get up and strike a captain-y pose. He goes back in the ship.

He might take off without me if he's mad enough, but if so he'll come back. He always does.

Tak shows up fifteen minutes later.

"The ship's fixed," I tell her. "We're taking off now. Did you have any possessions you wanted to bring?"

"I have no need for possessions," she says. "How long will the trip be?"

"Three hours." Her eyes widen slightly. "Thanks to something Zim invented," I add. I don't really know why I said that, but it felt right, and the incredulous look on her face when she hears it feels right, too.

"I see. In that case there's no need for me to get more supplies," she says.

We go into the ship. Zim is nowhere to be seen. Probably off sulking and watching TV. And getting hyper on candy. I know he has a stash in here somewhere.

Tak takes his seat. I almost tell her to get up, but there's nowhere else for her to sit in this room and maybe Zim will stay in his room and avoid her (and another scene) for the whole trip.

I sit down next to her. "Computer, take off," I say.

"Fine," the computer groans, and the engines start. Soon the ground is disappearing beneath us. Tak watches with an indescribable expression.

"How did you end up here?" I ask her.

"I don't want to talk about it," she says, frowning.

Hmph. Fine. I'm only her rescuer and everything. "Okay."

I set the autopilot for Okken 5. My superiors would want me to bring Tak in to headquarters for my dad to poke and prod at her, but she's a mature sapient being and has the right to go where she wants to go.

And I don't want to bring her into headquarters. Zim would sic Keef on her for sure.

I'm about to pull up a game of Tetris on the ship's computer when Tak says: "How did your... situation come about?"

"Well-" Suddenly, even though our crash was totally Zim's fault, I don't want to tell Tak that. "-it was a computer malfunction. Just plain started the self-destruct mech outta nowhere! Funny, huh?"

"That's not what happened," the computer says.

"Shut up," I say.

Tak is shaking her head. "No! I mean, how did you become... false littermates?"

Oh. That.

I could frown and say 'I don't want to talk about it', but I'm a firm believer in the basic goodness of sapient beings. (Something both Zim and Gaz rib me about.) If she knows more about us, she might drop the 'tude. Right? Right!

So I tell her how we adopted Zim.

Of course, 'adopted' implies some calm, altruistic process with agencies and paperwork. What really happened was a lot more... random.

See, I was about five years old and I was walking to school one day when I heard this funny noise from an alley. I went to look and there was this baby Irken, sitting there between the trash cans. I thought that was so awesome. I'd only seen your common species, Vortains, Meekrobs, screwheads, all those. An Irken was something new. I didn't even know what he was then. Where I live, at least, you don't learn about Irkens in school until fifth grade.

I tried to pick him up (he was about the size of one of Gaz's teddy bears) and he smacked my hand away and said something really angry in a language I'd never heard before.

"Fine," I said. "I don't like you either then. I didn't even wanna touch you. You're all dirty and gross."

Or something like that. He really was pretty dirty.

When I went home that day, I passed by the same alley and I looked to see if he was still there. He was. He hissed at me.

I stuck my tongue out and went home.

I had to pass that spot every day, twice a day, when I went to and from school. I got in the habit of checking on 'that gross little green dude' every time I went by. I decided he was some kind of dumb animal and stopped being offended when he jabbered at me. I'd talk to him. He'd make 'eh?' noises or try to warn me off. He was always in that same spot. I don't know why for sure. By the time he learned fluent enough English to tell us (it's dangerous to an Irken that young to download language into them), he'd forgotten why he was there and where he came from to begin with.

It was, like, a week after I first saw him when I noticed he was getting really weak, he could barely sit up any more.

"Are you sick?" I asked him. "Do you want to come home with me?"

He just looked at me with big, suffering eyes. He's still really good at that look. He uses it on our boss now.

"Aw, you don't mean to get mad at me. It's all your savage kind knows! I'll bring you home and feed you and clean you up and tame you and we'll be best buds!" I told him. "We can explore uncharted planets together! Just me and my pet... I'll call you a Floozatron! Just me and my best buddy the Floozatron! Everyone else will want a Floozatron, but I'll have the only one! And they'll all be jealous!"

He just blinked at me.

"Okay," I said, and I picked him up and carried him home. I was holding him with my arms locked around his middle, like a kid drags around a stuffed animal. I probably came close to breaking his back or something.

Now, since I was five, and Zim was pretty dirty, I didn't think that he needed food more than a bath. I tried to clean him in the sink, but he started screaming and crying and trying to get away when he touched the water. I was young and stupid but not too much so to know the difference between someone who's scared by water and someone who's hurt by it, so I gave up on the sink and just scrubbed him with paper towels. He didn't like that either, but he was too small and too weak to escape.

Then I tried to feed him. Irkens can't eat human food. I tried everything in the fridge on him, but he wouldn't touch it. (I left it out in the middle of the floor, too, where it rotted and the robonanny had to get rid of it all.)

Then I tried random stuff around the house. After dirt, houseplants, Play-Doh and dust bunnies, I finally hit on bar soap. Zim ate three bars and drank half a bottle of dish soap and then sort of collapsed in a heap on the floor.

I carried him upstairs and put him in my bed. "You're gonna be the best pet ever," I told him while he lay there and stared up at me though half-closed eyes. "I can't wait to bring you to school! Can you spit acid or anything? Those are some sharp teeth you've got. I bet you can bite Torque Smacky's head off! Hey, are you a full-grown Floozatron, or are you just a baby?" I started bouncing up and down on the edge of the bed, which made Zim bounce up and down too and squawk in protest. I stopped bouncing. "Hey, I bet you grow up to be super huge and I can ride around on your head! And if anyone gets in our way you can just step on 'em!"

That part didn't pan out.

"Oh, I never told you my name!" I said. "I'm Dib!" I tapped my chest. "Dib! Me-" I pointed at myself. "Dib! Man, I bet you're smart. I bet you can learn my name and learn tricks and-"

"Zim."

I leaned forward, staring. "Huh?"

He waved at himself. "Zim. K' trasss Zim."

My mouth fell open. "Is that your name?"

He pointed at me. In my meager defense, I hadn't seen him use gestures when I thought he was gonna be my new pet, I'd just seen him sit there, give me mournful or angry looks, and slap me. "Dib." He pointed at himself. "Zim." He was starting to look faintly annoyed.

I bounced up and down. He squawked. I got up so I could bounce up and down all I wanted. I was too excited to be still right then. "That's awesome! You can talk, like a parrot!"

He curled up on his side, facing away from me. I ran downstairs to tell Gaz.

She wasn't interested.

A few days later Dad came home for a visit and I showed off my discovery. For the first and only time in my life Dad went nuts over something I'd done. Zim was a member of a highly endangered species, which made him a great conservation opportunity, a great research opportunity, and a great marketing opportunity, and soon- in a huge, public-relations display that went on for weeks- he became a member of our family, too. As another child, though, not as my pet.

I was over the moon. An alien pet was cool, but an intelligent, speaking alien brother was ten times as cool. Especially since he was endangered and everyone I met wanted to ask me about him.

I think Gaz hated the whole deal and all the attention Zim was getting, but she hates everything.

I was right there 24/7 to teach Zim English and tell him all about life on Earth. He was scared out of his wits by all the big, unfamiliar people with flashing cameras following him around, and he spent his first six months with our family surgically attached to my leg.

He's actually three years younger than I am, but we've always been in the same grade at school. I wanted him with me, because I thought he was fun and I wanted to show him off, so I smuggled him in in my backpack. He was smart enough to keep up with the schoolwork, so we just kept attending together.

Dad never caught on. He lost interest in Zim when Super Toast started taking off.

And of course, now we're Explorers together. And, even though he's a total idiot who keeps crashing our ship, I might quit if I was assigned to someone else.

When I finish my story, Tak doesn't exactly look all that much more endeared to us than she was before. I can't really read her expression, but it's not a mushy one, I know that.

"So that's it," I say. "That's what happened."

"A pet?" she says.

I blink. "No, not a pet! That was just a silly idea I had when I was five. He's not my pet."

"Hmph." She's quiet for a while. I wonder if I should say something. Then she says: "You sound... attached to him."

"What do you mean? Of course I'm attached to him! He's my brother!" And now I know why he's so mad at her.

"Irkens feel no attachment. They are incapable of it."

I raise an eyebrow. I've heard similar stuff before, of course, all from people who've never known an Irken. I always figured it was, you know, bull. Hearing Tak say it sheds an interesting light on the Irken species. Now I know that the Irkens themselves spread that lie, to make everyone think they were ruthless, unstoppable killers!

And they were ruthless, unstoppable killers. Xenophobic, too. They'd wipe out entire species just to have a new parking garage. There's a reason why they're endangered now: the whole universe hated them. Zim still gets some nasty insults from time to time, from people who don't even know him.

"Of course they are," is what I say to her.

She gives me a cool look. "I see you don't believe me. Whether you believe it or not, your 'little brother' can't 'care' for you any more than you 'care' for a wad of gum on your shoe!"

Sounds more like Gaz, actually. "Sure."

She looks at the view screen. "If he acts as though there's an attachment, it's solely to get what he wants."

Also sounds more like Gaz. "Sure."

She shakes her head a little. "Humans make themselves blind to the truth so readily. Anything they don't want to see simply doesn't exist."

What a bucket of sunshine Tak is. I start a game of Tetris.

Zim doesn't come out of his quarters until after I've dropped Tak off on Okken 5. She marched away without a word of goodbye. I saw her off and then came back to the bridge to find Zim had retaken his chair.

"She sat in my chair," he snaps.

"How do you know that?"

"It smells like her. No one sits in my chair!"

"Well, she's gone now," I say.

"Why did you let her sit in my chair?"

"There was nowhere else for her to sit!"

"So?!"

I roll my eyes, sit down and set our co-ordinates for headquarters. Zim kicks the underside of the control panel. It's all scuffed up on his side. I wonder if Tak actually believes that crap about her species not being able to form attachments to things. She was right about one thing: people really can be good at deluding themselves. Why, humans spent centuries not believing in werewolves! Or even life off of their planet! And Irkens are just another kind of person, with, I'd think, equal capacity for self-deception.

"She was so ugly," Zim mumbles.

"What?"

"All green and bug-eyed. Ew."

I can't think of anything to say. Our A.I. can. "Aren't you green and bug-eyed?" it says.

Zim shrugs a little, staring off into space. By which I mean 'empty space' like 'staring at nothing', not that he's staring at the literal outer space surrounding the ship. "Hm. Yeah."

A weird thought is occurring to me. Our ship doesn't have any mirrors on it, except for the one in my room. I thought for sure there used to be one in the bathroom, but it's not there anymore...

I shake away my weird half-formed impressions. Zim is way too egotistical to have species-identity issues. I sink back in my seat. "Dad's gonna flip."

"Huh? Oh. Yeah."

"He'll probably send us right back out to go ask her to come to headquarters."

"I think I'm coming down with some horrible mysterious illness."

"Atta boy."

Watching my brother squirm around in his seat (he can't sit still so well), I think of how different he is from Tak. I wonder if he'd be like her if he was allowed to grow up with his own kind. I wonder what he'd be like if he'd come from the time before the Massive exploded, when Irkens ruled the universe. Could he ever be a ruthless, xenophobic megalomaniac like they were? If we'd met then, would he tell me about my silly human emotions?

Or worse?

I don't want to think about it. It's terrible, thinking things like that about my only family member who gives a crap about me.

I stare out at the stars for a little while. My bum arm means I'll be a bit slow on the controls, but that should make me an even match to Zim's lack of fingers. "Tetris?"

He cracks his knuckles. "Just don't cry when you lose this time. It's getting annoying."

I've never lost at Tetris.

To Zim.

Gaz is another story.

But she's not here.

I'm rambling.

When we go to headquarters, first we get some food and something to drink. Then we go to the med bay. I have my arm re-set and get an injection of nanobots to speed up the healing and kill the pain. (The injury to my head was really superficial and doesn't need treatment.) Both of us get something to put on the sunburn we got. Neither humankind nor Irkenkind was meant to face two suns.

Then we hit the showers, and then we head for the room we share. I flop down in my bed and Zim collapses in a chair.

"Human son! Alien son! Good morning!"

I jump, jolting my arm. "Guh?"

I sit up and rub my eyes. Dad's standing in the doorway, hands on his hips. Zim's curled up in his chair, not making eye contact. The alarm clock says it's six AM. Great.

"Hi, Dad," I say. "What's up?"

"I heard the two of you met a female Irken yesterday!"

"Yep," I say.

"Where was she?" he demands, making flamboyant gestures. Zim probably got his melodramatic attitude from watching Dad. "What happened? Details, man!"

"I already turned in my report," I say, pointing to the paperwork slot in the wall.

"Did she seem healthy?" Dad asks.

"She did. I put that in the report."

Zim starts drumming his fingers on the arm of the chair and making irritable humming sounds. Dad wags a finger at him. "Patience, son! You should be more like your human brother!"

Zim freezes, flashing a guilty look at the floor. I say: "I can't really tell you anything that's not in the report, Dad. It was a pretty complete report."

"Didn't you take samples from the planet?"

"Of course we did! I put them in the slot," Zim says.

Dad rubs his chin. "Hmm! Well, alien son, you'll just have to go to Okken 5 to bring her here for an interview! Dib will stay here and recover from his injury!"

Zim blanches. "Oh, Zim can't go," I say. "He's pretty sick. He got some bad food or something on that planet."

"That's a shame. We'll have to do a battery of time-consuming, painful and humiliating tests!" I can never believe my dad talks like that. "Oh well! I'll have to ask Keef!"

And he strides away.

Zim sags in relief. "Thank you."

"No problem." I raise an eyebrow. "You'd really rather go through a battery of time-consuming, painful and humiliating tests, huh?"

He scoffs. "I laugh at pain and humiliation!"

I watch him for a minute as he takes out a comic book (something really juvenile with lots of bad puns and lots of gore) and starts reading it. Then, having noticed there are no mirrors in here either, and there used to be, I ask him: "Do you ever wish you were like everyone else? Like, a human? Or a Vortian or something?"

His whole body jerks, his eyes going wide with shock. I wonder if it's really any of my business asking a question like that. Then I think, of course it's my business! He's my brother!

"Are you kidding?" he scoffs. "I am ZIM! I'm AWESOME! Why would I want to be normal like you?"

"Just asking," I say. "Since you thought Tak was so awful and all."

He shakes his head. "Silly Dib. Silly, silly Dib. I love me." He goes back to his comic.

Well, that's nice to know.

Tak rejects the offer to come here for an interview. My dad will keep sending people to bug her until she comes here or he moves on to something else. In the meantime, Zim and I have accepted a really long and dangerous mission that'll take us out of the galaxy for months at the very least. We're totally psyched.

It's about two weeks after our last crash. My arm is better, the ship is fixed, and we're ready to go.

I start the launching sequences and Zim bounces up and down in the seat.

"Well, we're off," I say as the launch bay disappears beneath us. "Zim and Dib: Explorers extraordinaire!"

"HOO-AH!" He punches both fists into the air.

"To infinity and beyond!"

"To infinity and even further!"

We do a high-five, set the autopilot and strike up the Tetris. Just another day on the job, ma'am.

I wonder where we'll crash next. I hope it's somewhere with nicer people.

And not as hot.


End file.
